Wednesday 21 May 2014

TRUST YOUR HEART IF SEAS CATCH FIRE

“Trust your heart if seas catch fire. Live by love though stars go backwards!” E.E. Cummings

This quote is from a movie that I had watched last night on my sofa.
I had no idea what I was expecting, I had just been looking to watch something easy and inspiring…and ended up seeing something that stirred a big turmoil inside of me.
I want to write about it a little more and share this with you.
The movie I had been watching is called: Charlie St. Cloud.
The movie has no big cast and the story is simple, but the characters are deep. It was a story about letting go, about the beauty of life and stunned me with pictures of outstanding Canadian scenery and it’s breath-taking, complementing world of nature! The movie made me want to learn how to sail a boat but most of all, it was about taking chances; about taking risks.

Sometimes, we’re faced with mayor decisions in our life, which we know will be life changing.
It’s the moment we feel the urge to do certain things, follow a certain path or make a certain decision.
On one side, those moments are filled with an inner drive, enthusiasm and excitement. Our heart is on fire and there is this power stirring within us waiting to be released. On the other side we’re eye to eye with the feeling of fear, frustration and resentment.
I’ve been at those crossroads before in my life.
Sometimes I took the chances and sometimes I pulled out and away from them. Sometimes, the voice in my heart was stronger, and sometimes my brain got in the way and made me follow a different path.

What does it mean to take a ‘risk’?
Taking a risk comes with a negative taste and seems unwise and dangerous, resulting from an underlying, subconscious perception of the possibility of a bad outcome.
The dull and raw taste of a ‘risk’ sometimes makes me agonizing over every decision, squeezing antique memories of failures through the kneading trough and I’m choking up bad retentions.
But the more I start looking back, the lighter the taste of a risk is getting. It is starting to melt away.
The further I look back, the more I realize that I’m not the old person anymore. My believes have changed (thank god, otherwise I would still sit here thinking that ‘success’ in life means winning the gold medal at school race!) and that no two moments are the same.
Some ‘risks’ don’t pay off, others do more the less, I used to think, but in the end, actually any ‘risk’ I ever took in live has paid off one way or the other. It wasn’t really a risk, it was a chance.
It wasn’t necessarily about the expected, planned outcome but about the journey itself.
It was never a path of failure but a journey of collecting experience, knowledge, learning and growing.
Taking risks makes way to unforeseen opportunities leading to even bigger visions, which I haven’t even considered before!
Basically, there is no such thing as a risk, since there is nothing for us to loose.
Sounds unreasonable, right?
My way of thinking here is quite simple.
Have you never realised that something that happened and seemed like a big disaster in your life, turned out as a blessing in disguise?
I’m pretty sure you’re good at remembering some life-changing disasters of your life. Write down one or two, write down everything about it and how it made you feel….and then find 3 good things that came from it.
I’m pretty sure, that after some time of resistance and severe impulses of reluctance you will be able to find even more than only 3 positive benefits that had happened to you ever since.
And there you realise, there is never a real loss, things are just shifting and always in our favour!

Taking a ‘risk’ means to set out on your journey, to relax into the uncomfortable feeling of not knowing exactly how and where it is going.
This moment makes us feel extremely vulnerable due to the loss of control and perception.

A beautiful person throughout once said to me: “Taking risks and chances isn't necessarily a part of existence but it is essential to living. Heading for the unknown turns a journey to an adventure.”

What does it mean taking NO risks?
It means we are shutting ourselves away from the world, making our own life grey and turn our fields of creativity and happiness into a desert wasteland.
A lot of times, the cost we pay by NOT taking chances is much higher than when surrendering to dive right into it.
There were moments in my life where I wished I had been more courageous, been less wary and where I wished I had trusted in myself more instead of underestimating my own ability to handle consequences of the ‘risk’ taken.
What’s been holding me back mostly in the past was my severe concern of what others might think?
I didn’t want to hurt anyone, let anyone down and didn’t want anyone dear to me to be disappointed. I didn’t want to loose the self-image I had put up over the years and I cared too much about what others might think and took responsibility to what they might feel about it!
These circumstances haven’t got me nowhere near to where I want to be in life and how I want to live and most of all it has been suffocating my ability to live passionately and to expand and grow, since true growth is only possible in the eye of change and getting out of our comfort zone.

I’ve come to realize that sometimes I have to take a risk in order to be true to who I am and to be able to maintain my values.
I’ve learned that I don’t have to jump into things with eyes closed, but to open my eyes, face the fear and the delicacy of vulnerability - and jump nevertheless.
Following my gut against reason has turned many moments of my life in mere miracles and transformed me into who I am today, so believe me when I say:
“Take chances, take risks! Paint your life with colors of passion and get out of your comfort zone! Get out of your head and into your life, trust what you already know is right and always remember: YOU CAN’T GET IT WRONG!”

LET’S STOP TAKING ‘RISKS’ – LET’S START TAKING CHANCES!








Thursday 15 May 2014

A MIX TAPE

“A mix tape, Mali, is a beautiful thing. Sadly it pretty much died out with cassette decks in the early 90s but for you I felt a revival was justified. A mix tape is a cassette of various tracks from one person’s music collection, lovingly hand picked for a special and very lucky recipient and individually recorded into a little album for them. It’s the craft and investment of time that let’s the recipient know they’re special, even if the actual product was pretty bad! For your modern day email equivalent we’ll have to set the artificial 12-track limit to make sure each track is important. You up for it?”

Hell I was!
I never had a mix tape done for myself, never done one for someone else either!

It sounded like an awesome new thing to do, so I sat down and started browsing my music collection and playlists.

There is a certain atmosphere to music.
Since music is vibration it affects our emotions bluntly.
If we look at the playlists of other people and friends we get an idea about how they roll.
We identify with the music we listen; we express our emotions, feelings and beliefs through music because we choose (mostly subconsciously) genres and songs that reflect parts of our character.
That’s why I found putting together a mix tape quite challenging.
It made me feel slightly vulnerable, sharing parts of myself with someone else, giving someone an understanding to my emotional world.

I put up a folder and started putting some of my favourite songs in there…by the time I got tired my playlist has reached the amount of 34 songs and I wasn’t even half way through my music collection!

That was the moment I got totally hooked with the idea of a mix tape!
Back then in the old times there was of course less artists to chose from, whilst nowadays new artists, bands and songs are sprouting like weed everyday!

Whenever I share music with friends, we usually swap pen drives with about 50 songs or sth like that and yes, I am always happy about this, but this was different!

I started listening to all the songs carefully. Each song carried memories or was stirring emotions inside of me. I had to dig deep and ask myself if this is what I wanted to share with my mix-tape-companion.
What was it I wanted to share?
What was it that I wanted to express?
And what is it that I wanted my mix-tape-companion to feel?

Quickly I got down to only 16 songs, and finally to quiver of only 12 tracks.

I found doing a mix-tape digitally was also quite fun, since nowadays you can find a lot of webpages that do mix tapes for you!
You can choose the look of the tape, upload the pictures, choose colours, style, and fonts for writing and so on. The list is endless!

Finally, there I was, staring at my fully individualized first mix-tape ever! Digital or not, it felt amazing and I sent it off.

Making a mix tape is fun and great experience, but receiving one is even more thrilling!

The excitement before the first song comes up is nearly unbearable and when the first song hit me, it’s like entering a rollercoaster ride for the next 30min.!!!

The first mix tape I received was amazing!!!
From the very first song, it hit me like a gun with a song that fitted into my very emotional state right away.
Each following song was new to me, felt like a great tune I could connect beautiful memories to and resonated with me, whilst also representing a part of my mix-tape-companion!

At the moment, out here in bigT, the sun is slowly rising.
I can slightly hear the shorebreak of the ocean through my headphones whilst coasting on my longboard past the sea out of town, listening to my first mix-tape ever!
With “Coolio – Cruising” I’m totally thrilled and fully touched, thinking: “Man, that’s one of the best presents ever!!!”

“A mix tape is like a letter…only on a higher vibration!”

EVERYONE OUT THERE, MAKE A MIX TAPE!